Book: Jacqueline, Complete

T >> Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) >> Jacqueline, Complete




By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would
give her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well, and
who would not weary of Lizerolles. But a week later the idea of this kind
of marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling was
partly owing to Giselle. Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that went to
his heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for a chance
again to give itself away. She was with Madame d'Argy, who had not been
well enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he saw at the
same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at Tonquin in
his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought so
beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and
tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and
goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry,
and fainted away.

"Don't be alarmed; it is only joy," said Giselle, in her soft voice.

And when Madame d'Argy proved her to be right by recovering very quickly,
overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with kisses,
Giselle held out her hand to him and said:

"I, too, am very glad you have come home."

"Oh!" cried the sick woman in her excitement, "you must kiss your old
playfellow!"

Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
like a helmet of gold. Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing
which made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but it
seemed to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest
eagerness, notwithstanding Giselle's attempts to interrupt her, Madame
d'Argy repeated to her son all she owed to that dear friend "her own
daughter, the best of daughters, the most patient, the most devoted of
daughters, could not have done more! Ah! if there only could be found
another one like her!"

Whereupon the object of all these praises made her escape, disclaiming
everything.

Why, after this, should she have hesitated to come back to Lizerolles
every day, as of late had been her custom? Men know so little about
taking care of sick people. So she came, and was present at all the
rejoicings and all the talks that followed Fred's return. She took her
part in the discussions about Fred's future. "Help me, my pet," said
Madame d'Argy, "help me to find a wife for him: all we ask is that she
should be like you."

In answer to which Fred declared, half-laughing and half-seriously, that
that was his ideal.

She did not believe much of this, but, following her natural instinct,
she assumed the dangerous task of consolation, until, as Madame d'Argy
grew better, she discontinued her daily visits, and Fred, in his turn,
took a habit of going over to Fresne without being invited, and spending
there a good deal of his time.

"Don't send me away. You who are always charitable," he said. "If you
only knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from
Tonquin!"

"But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that
term, and my conversation is not worth coming for," objected Giselle.

In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in
intellectual culture. Women left to themselves have time to read, and
Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.
Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of her
son? With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke to
Fred of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her his
advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good man.
Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity: she named no one,
but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand, who in
person was very like his father, might also inherit his character. Fears
on this subject, however, appeared unfounded. There was nothing about the
child that was not good; his tastes were those of his mother. He was
passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as the latter
arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty red ribbon
to wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing far away
over the seas, like sailors.

"A sailor! Heaven forbid!" cried Madame de Talbrun.

"Oh! sailors come back again. He has come back. Couldn't he take me away
with him soon? I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much
older than I."

"Let us hope that your friend Fred won't go away," said Giselle. "But why
do you wish to be a cabinboy?"

"Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here--because I
like him," answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.

Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness. He would
not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the corps
de ballet. She would not lose him. "But, oh, Fred!" she cried, "it is not
to be wondered at that he is so fond of you! You spoil him! You will be a
devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for marriage."

She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d'Argy
would like her to say.

"In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me," he said,
one day; "and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women--I
mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice--are
indifferent to me. My feeling almost amounts to antipathy."

For the first time she ventured to say: "Do you still care for
Jacqueline?"

"About as much as she cares for me," he answered, dryly. "No, I made a
mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future."

Another day he said:

"I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved."

Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to
Enguerrand.

Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about. He believed in a
high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
pleasures. The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
pleased with a heart that would be hers alone. She would be the lady who
presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous
actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of
earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.

Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
happy. This, then, was the reward of her spotless life! She was the
object of a worship no less tender than respectful. Fred spoke of the
woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, "I love you;" he
pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his
mother had just kissed him. Day after day he seemed more attracted to
that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed
before, she expected him. Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she
was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St.
Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face
reflects the soul. All that winter there was a new Giselle--a Giselle who
passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody said,
even her husband, "Ma foi! but she is beautiful!" Oscar de Talbrun, as he
made this remark, never thought of wondering why she was more beautiful.
He was ready to take offense and was jealous by nature, but he was
perfectly sure of his wife, as he had often said. As to Fred, the idea of
being jealous of him would never have entered his mind. Fred was a
relative and was admitted to all the privileges of a cousin or a brother;
besides, he was a fellow of no consequence in any way.

While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred
and Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand,
Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if
she is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence. Possibly she
had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of "companion,"
which, apparently more cordial than that of 'demoiselle de compagnie',
means in reality the same thing--a sort of half-servile position.

Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially
when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the
other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and
daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any
number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny they
disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place
therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de
Nailles was far from being a sinecure. Jacqueline received her salary on
the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, received her wages, for,
although her position was apparently one of much greater importance and
consideration than Justine's, she was really at the beck and call of a
girl who, while she called her "darling," gave her orders and paid her
for her services. Very often Miss Nora asked her to sew, on the plea that
she was as skilful with her fingers as a fairy, but in reality that her
employer might feel the superiority of her own position.

Hitherto Miss Nora had been delighted to meet at watering-places a friend
of whom she could say proudly, "She is a representative of the old
nobility of France" (which was not true, by the way, for the title of
Baron borne by M. de Nailles went no farther back than the days of Louis
XVIII); and she was still more proud to think that she was now waited on
by this same daughter of a nobleman, when her own father had kept a
drinking-saloon. She did not acknowledge this feeling to herself, and
would certainly have maintained that she never had had such an idea, but
it existed all the same, and she was under its influence, being very vain
and rather foolish. And, indeed, Jacqueline, would have been very willing
to plan trimmings and alter finery from morning to night in her own
chamber in a hotel, exactly as Mademoiselle Justine did, if she could by
this means have escaped the special duties of her difficult position,
which duties were to follow Miss Nora everywhere, like her own shadow, to
be her confidant and to act sometimes as her screen, or even as her
accomplice, in matters that occasionally involved risks, and were never
to her liking.

The young American girl had already said to her father, when he asked her
to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor, which
search he feared might drag on forever without any results: "Oh! I shall
be sure to find him at Bellagio!" And she made up her mind that there he
was to be sought and found at any price. Hotel life offered her
opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for there she met
many specimens of men she called chic, with a funny little foreign
accent, which seemed to put new life into the wornout word. Twenty times
a day she baited her hook, and twenty times a day some fish would bite,
or at least nibble, according as he was a fortune-hunter or a dilettante.
Miss Nora, being incapable of knowing the difference, was ready to
capture good or bad, and went about dragging her slaves at her
chariot-wheels. Sometimes she took them rowing, with the Stars and
Stripes floating over her boat, by moonlight; sometimes she drove them
recklessly in a drag through roads bordered by olive-groves and
vineyards; all these expeditions being undertaken under-pretence of
admiring the romantic scenery. Her father was not disposed to interfere
with what he called "a little harmless dissipation." He was confident his
daughter's "companion" must know what was proper, she being, as he said,
accustomed to good society. Were not all Italian ladies attended by
gentlemen? Who could blame a young girl for amusing herself? Meantime Mr.
Sparks amused himself after his own fashion, which was to sit
comfortably, with his feet up on the piazza rail of the hotel, imbibing
strong iced drinks through straws. But in reality Jacqueline had no power
whatever to preserve propriety, and only compromised herself by her
associations, though her own conduct was irreproachable. Indeed she was
considered quite prudish, and the rest of the mad crowd laughed at her
for having the manners of a governess. In vain she tried to say words of
warning to Nora; what she said was laughed at or resented in a tone that
told her that a paid companion had not the right to speak as frankly as a
friend.

Her business, she was plainly told one day, was to be on the spot in case
any impertinent suitor should venture too far in a tete-a-tete, but short
of that she was not to "spoilsport." "I am not doing anything wrong; it
is allowable in America," was Miss Nora's regular speech on such
occasions, and Jacqueline could not dispute the double argument. Nora's
conduct was not wicked, and in America such things might be allowed. Yet
Jacqueline tried to demonstrate that a young girl can not pass unscathed
through certain adventures, even if they are innocent in the strict sense
of the word; which made Nora cry out that all she said was subterfuge and
that she had no patience with prejudices.

In vain her young companion pointed out to her charge that other
Americans at Bellagio seemed far from approving her conduct. American
ladies of a very different class, who were staying at the hotel, held
aloof from her, and treated her with marked coldness whenever they met;
declaring that her manners would be as objectionable in her own country,
in good society, as they were in Italy.

But Miss Sparks was not to be put down by any argument. "Bah! they are
stuck-up Bostonians. And do you know, Jacqueline, you are getting very
tiresome? You were faster yourself than I when we were the Blue Band at
Treport."

Nora's admirers, sometimes encouraged, sometimes snubbed, when treated
cavalierly by this young lady, would occasionally pay court to the
'demoiselle de compagnie', who indeed was well worth their pains; but, to
their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great
coldness. Having entered her protest against what was going on, and
having resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should
somewhat exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right
point in such reaction. The result was, she made herself so disagreeable
to Miss Sparks that the latter determined on getting rid of her as
tactfully as possible.

Their parting took place on the day after an excursion to the Villa
Sommariva, where Miss Sparks and her little court had behaved with their
usual noise and rudeness. They had gone there ostensibly to see the
pictures, about which none of them cared anything, for Nora, wherever she
was, never liked any one to pay attention to anybody or to look at
anything but her own noisy, all-pervading self.

It so happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old
gentleman passed near the lively crowd. He was quite inoffensive,
pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue of
the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have produced
such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when, after a
moment's hesitation, he bowed to her. She recognized in him a friend of
Madame d'Argy, M. Martel, whom she had often met at her house in Paris
and at Lizerolles. When he recognized her, she fancied she had seen pass
over his face a look of painful surprise. He would surely tell how he had
met her; what would her old friends think of her? What would Fred? For
some time past she had thought more than ever before of what Fred would
think of her. The more she grew disgusted with the men she met, the more
she appreciated his good qualities, and the more she thought of the
honest, faithful love he had offered her--love that she had so madly
thrown away. She never should meet such love again, she thought. It was
the idea of how Fred would blame her when he heard what she pictured to
herself the old gentleman would say of her, that suddenly decided her to
leave Bellagio.

She told Mr. Sparks that evening that she was not strong enough for such
duties as were required of a companion.

He looked at her with pity and annoyance.

"I should have thought you had more energy. How do you expect to live by
work if you are not strong enough for pleasure?"

"Pleasure needs strength as well as labor," she said, smiling; "I would
rather work in the fields than go on amusing myself as I have been
doing."

"My dear, you must not be so difficult to please. When people have to
earn their bread, it is a bad plan. I am afraid you will find out before
long that there are harder ways of making a living than lunching,
dancing, walking, and driving from morning to night in a pretty
country--"

Here Mr. Sparks began to laugh as he thought of all he had had to do,
without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his
youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his
pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings
in his head, and little besides for baggage: "Muscle and pluck!--Muscle
and pluck!" and "Go ahead for ever!" That was the sort of thing to be
done when a man or a woman had not a cent.

And now, what was Jacqueline to do next? She reflected that in a very
short time she had attempted many things. It seemed to her that all she
could do now was to follow the advice which, when first given her by
Madame Strahlberg, had frightened her, though she had found it so
attractive. She would study with Madame Rochette; she would go to the
Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the
stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country. She
would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an
actress is compatible with self-respect. This resolve that she would
never be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her
plans, as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are
for the most part unknown to young girls born in her social position.
Jacqueline's character, far from being injured by her trials and
experiences, had gained in strength. She grew firmer as she gained in
knowledge. Never had she been so worthy of regard and interest as at the
very time when her friends were saying sadly to themselves, "She is going
to the bad," and when, from all appearances, they were right in this
conclusion.




CHAPTER XVII

TWIN DEVILS

Jacqueline came to the conclusion that she had better seriously consult
Madame Strahlberg. She therefore stopped at Monaco, where this friend,
whom she intended to honor with the strange office of Mentor, was passing
the winter in a little villa in the Condamine quarter--a cottage
surrounded by roses and laurel-bushes, painted in soft colors and looking
like a plaything.

Madame Strahlberg had already urged Jacqueline to come and make
acquaintance with her "paradise," without giving her any hint of the
delights of that paradise, from which that of gambling was not excluded,
for Madame Strahlberg was eager for any kind of excitement. Roulette now
occupied with her a large part of every night--indeed, her nights had
been rarely given to slumber, for her creed was that morning is the time
for sleep, for which reason they never took breakfast in the pink villa,
but tea, cakes, and confectionery were eaten instead at all hours until
the evening. Thus it happened very often that they had no dinner, and
guests had to accommodate themselves to the strange ways of the family.
Jacqueline, however, did not stay long enough to know much of those ways.

She arrived, poor thing, with weary wing, like some bird, who, escaping
from the fowler's net, where it has left its feathers, flies straight to
the spot where a sportsman lies ready to shoot it. She was received with
the same cries of joy, the same kisses, the same demonstrations of
affection, as those which, the summer before, had welcomed her to the Rue
de Naples. They told her she could sleep on a sofa, exactly like the one
on which she had passed that terrible night which had resulted in her
expulsion from the convent; and it was decided that she must stay several
days, at least, before she went on to Paris, to begin the life of hard
study and courageous work which would make of her a great singer.

Tired?--No, she was hardly tired at all. The journey over the enchanting
road of the Corniche had awakened in her a fervor of admiration which
prevented her from feeling any bodily needs, and now she seemed to have
reached fairyland, where the verdure of the tropics was like the hanging
gardens of Babylon, only those had never had a mirror to reflect back
their ancient, far-famed splendor, like that before her eyes, as she
looked down upon the Mediterranean, with the sun setting in the west in a
sky all crimson and gold.

Notwithstanding the disorder of her travelling-dress, Jacqueline allowed
her friend to take her straight from the railway station to the Terrace
of Monte Carlo. She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti,
the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low walls
whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the
evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades,
dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp
rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon
which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or
reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of
excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which
exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.

After exhausting her vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she
stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking
that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious
spectacles, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may have to be
passed through. Several minutes elapsed before she turned her radiant
face and dazzled eyes toward Wanda, or rather toward the spot where Wanda
had been standing beside her. "Oh! my dear--how beautiful!" she murmured
with a long sigh.

The sigh was echoed by a man, who for a few moments had looked at her
with as much admiration as she had looked at the landscape. He answered
her by saying, in a low voice, the tones of which made her tremble from
head to foot:

"Jacqueline!"

"Monsieur de Cymier!"

The words slipped through her lips as they suddenly turned pale. She had
an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare. If
not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three
other persons at some little distance.

"Forgive me--you did not expect to see me--you seem quite startled," said
the young man, drawing near her. With an effort she commanded herself and
looked full in his face. Her anger rose. She had seen the same look in
the ugly, brutal face of Oscar de Talbrun. From the Terrace of Monte
Carlo her memory flew back to a country road in Normandy, and she
clenched her hand round an imaginary riding-whip. She needed coolness and
she needed courage. They came as if by miracle.

"It is certain, Monsieur," she answered, slowly, "that I did not expect
to meet you here."

"Chance has had pity on me," he replied, bowing low, as she had set him
the example of ceremony.

But he had no idea of losing time in commonplace remarks--he wished to
take up their intimacy on the terms it had been formerly, to resume the
romance he himself had interrupted.

"I knew," he said in the same low voice, full of persuasion, which gave
especial meaning to his words, "I knew that, after all, we should meet
again."

"I did not expect it," said Jacqueline, haughtily.

"Because you do not believe in the magnetism of a fixed desire."

"No, I do not believe any such thing, when, opposed to such a desire,
there is a strong, firm will," said Jacqueline, her eyes burning.

"Ah!" he murmured, and he might have been supposed to be really moved, so
much his look changed, "do not abuse your power over me--do not make me
wretched; if you could only understand--"

She made a swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was
already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she had
left them together.

"Well! you have each found an old acquaintance," she said, gayly. "I beg
your pardon, my loveliest, but I had to speak to some old friends, and
ask them to join us to-morrow evening. We shall sup at the restaurant of
the Grand Hotel, after the opera--for, I did not tell you before, you
will have the good luck to hear Patti. Monsieur de Cymier, we shall
expect you. Au revoir."

He had been on the point of asking leave to walk home with them. But
there was something in Jacqueline's look, and in her stubborn silence,
that deterred him. He thought it best to leave a skilful advocate to
plead his cause before he continued a conversation which had not begun
satisfactorily. Not that Gerard de Cymier was discouraged by the behavior
of Jacqueline. He had expected her to be angry at his defection, and that
she would make him pay for it; but a little skill on his part, and a
little credulity on hers, backed by the intervention of a third party,
might set things right.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.